Havana Hangover
Randy Richardson
Fiction, contemporary crime
Renegade Press LLC, March 2023
256 pp
Print $4.99
About the Book
Thirty-year-old Chicago corporate lawyer
Tanner Ford leaves behind a painful past and lucrative job for a bucket-list
trip to Cuba with Jackson Swift, his estranged best friend from law school. But
when they arrive, the oddities start adding up. Jackson evades questions about
his wife and kids. Their itinerary keeps changing, and their tour guide might
work for a fake company. When Tanner awakes after a rum-soaked night beside
Dannel, a local musician with something to hide, and a text from Jackson that reads
“HELP ME,” his dream vacation turns into a fight for survival. He is held
hostage in an abandoned cigar factory, interrogated by the police, and hunted
down by a mysterious “ghost” in the Cuban government. Beset by anxiety and
panic attacks, Tanner is hurled unwittingly into an international conspiracy
leading right back to Jackson and a friendship that began in betrayal.
Havana Hangover combines the disoriented protagonist of Andrea
Bartz’s The Lost Night with the political intrigue of a Paul
Vidich novel. It is a story about healing, friendship, love and deceit, set
within a lovingly-rendered Cuban cityscape and fueled by rapid twists and
turns, eventually landing in the corrupt corners of DC politics.
My review
Havana Hangover is
a contemporary road trip gone off the edge. Attorney Tanner Ford, just long
enough out of law school, realizes the big-money dream wasn’t living up to
reality and decided to jump off the merry-go-round when a former law school
roomie came p with tickets to a bucket-list trip of a lifetime worth crashing
his career for; even giving up the final game of the World Series-serious.
Cuba, magical land of hero Ernest Hemingway, beckoned, and for the first
twenty-four hours or so, truly lived up to Tanner’s expectations and then some.
Able to ditch his sleezy former buddy for a hot hookup, things take a serious
downturn with a progression of texts ending in an all-cap call for help.
Everything about the trip and the people
involved, the tour guide, the partner, the hookup girl…even Jackson, the former
friend, turned out to be anything more than smoke and mirrors.
Throughout the story, which takes place at the
turning tide of planetary unrest in political and pandemic turmoil, Tanner’s
life seems to parallel to divide between what he knows and what he’s always
dreamed of, and what he thought he wanted. Crisis after crisis, both in Cuba
and at home, lead him in directions borne of fear and disgust. Havana
Hangover could be read as a simple ultimate bad trip novel, but deep down,
it’s a warning about the darkness of desire and depravity at every level of
society. Richardson’s research and setting come from experience as an attorney
and a traveler, smoothly inviting the reader into his world. Recommended for
those who enjoy espionage and thrillers without pages of jargon or a host of
throwaway characters.
About the Author
Randy is an attorney, former journalist, and a
die-hard Cubs fan. As the president of the Chicago Writers Association, he is
deeply involved with Chicago’s writing community, including as an organizer of
the Let’s Just Write! conference. He is the author of two well-received
novels, Cheeseland and Lost in the Ivy, as well as
co-author of Cubsessions, all from hybrid publisher Eckhartz Press.
His essays have been published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines
including Hypertext and Memory House. Visit his
website, randyrichardson.co, to learn more about his work.
No comments:
Post a Comment